Madonna
wikipedia | 2013-12-03 16:43
Madonna (born Madonna Louise Ciccone /tʃɪˈkoʊneɪ/ chi-KOH-nay; August 16, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, director, dancer, and entrepreneur. She has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the best-selling female recording artist of all time by Guinness World Records. Considered to be one of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" by Time for being an influential figure in contemporary music, she is known for continuously reinventing both her music and image, and for retaining a standard of autonomy within the recording industry. Critics have praised her diverse musical productions which have also been known to induce controversy.


 
Born in Bay City, Michigan, Madonna moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her self-titled debut album in 1983. She followed it with a series of albums that attained immense popularity by pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music and imagery in her music videos, which became a fixture on MTV. Throughout her career, many of her songs have hit number one on the record charts, including "Like a Virgin", "Papa Don't Preach", "Into the Groove" "Like a Prayer", "Vogue", "Frozen", "Music", "Hung Up", and "4 Minutes".
 
Although she received generally positive reviews for her role in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985),her later film appearances received mixed commentary. She received critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Evita (1996), but has received harsh feedback for other performances. Her other ventures include: fashion design, writing children's books, and film directing and producing. She has been acclaimed as a businesswoman. In 1992, she founded entertainment company Maverick as a joint venture with Time Warner. In 2007, she signed a US $120 million record, touring and merchandising contract with Live Nation.
 
According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Madonna is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second top-selling female albums artist in the United States, with 64.5 million certified albums. In 2008, Billboard ranked her at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of the chart. She was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same year. In 2012, she was crowned the "Greatest Woman In Music" by VH1.


 
Artistry
Musical style
Madonna's music has been the subject of much analysis and scrutiny by critics. Robert M. Grant, author of Contemporary Strategy Analysis (2005), commented that what has brought Madonna success is "certainly not outstanding natural talent. As a vocalist, musician, dancer, songwriter, or actress, Madonna's talents seem modest."He asserts Madonna's success is in relying on the talents of others, and that her personal relationships have served as cornerstones to the numerous reinventions in the longevity of her career.Madonna's approach was far from the music industry wisdom of "Find a winning formula and stick to it." Her musical career has been a continuous experimentation with new musical ideas and new images and a constant quest for new heights of fame and acclaim. Grant concluded that "having established herself as the queen of popular music, Madonna did not stop there, but continued re-inventing."Mark Bego, author of Madonna: Blonde Ambition, called her "the perfect vocalist for lighter-than-air songs", despite not being a "heavyweight talent."Madonna has always been self-conscious about her voice, especially in comparison to her vocal idols such as Ella Fitzgerald, Prince and Chaka Khan.According to Freya Jarman-Ivens, Madonna's talent for developing "incredible" hooks for her songs allows the lyrics to capture the attention of the audience, even without the influence of the music. As an example, Jarman-Ivens cites the 1985 single "Into the Groove" and its line "Live out your fantasy here with me, just let the music set you free; Touch my body, and move in time, now I know you're mine."[Madonna's lyrics often suggest an identification with the gay community. Santiago Fouz-Hernández believes that when Madonna sings "Come on girls, do you believe in love?" in "Express Yourself", she is addressing both the gay audience and the heterosexual female.Even in the Erotica era, with its often adult-oriented lyrics, the songs appear free-flowing and gullible ("So won't you go down, where it's warm inside" — "Where Life Begins" from Erotica).
 
Madonna has a mezzo-soprano vocal range.She started her musical career with songs that she described as "soulful pop music". Madonna recalled in a 1983 interview with Island magazine that she had wanted to grow up as a black kid."First of all, all the black girls in my neighborhood had these dances in their yard where they had these little turntables with 45 records and they'd play all this Motown stuff and they would dance, just dance, all of them dancing together and none of the white kids I knew would ever do that. They were really boring and stiff. And I wanted to be part of the dancing. I didn't like my friends. I had to be beaten up so many times by these little black girls before they would accept me and finally one day they whipped me with a rubber hose till I was like, lying on the ground crying. And then they just stopped doing it all of a sudden and let me be their friend, part of their group."On her 1983 debut album, Madonna's vocal abilities and personal artistry were not fully formed. Her vocal style was similar to other pop stars of that period like Paula Abdul, Debbie Gibson, and Taylor Dayne.The songs on Madonna reveal several key trends that have continued to define her success, including a strong dance-based idiom, catchy hooks, highly polished arrangements and Madonna's own vocal style. In songs such as "Lucky Star" and "Borderline", Madonna introduced a style of upbeat dance music that would prove particularly appealing to gay audiences. The bright, girlish vocal timbre of the early years became passé in Madonna's later works, the change being deliberate, since Madonna was constantly reminded of how the critics had once labelled her as "Minnie Mouse on helium", because of her early voice.Her second album, Like a Virgin (1984), foreshadowed several trends in Madonna's later works. It contained references to classical works (pizzicato synthesizer line that opens "Angel"); potential negative reaction from social groups ("Dress You Up" was blacklisted by the Parents Music Resource Center); and retro styles ("Shoo-Bee-Doo", Madonna's homage to Motown).Madonna's early style, and the change that she ushered in it, is best evident in the song "Material Girl". It opens with Madonna using a little-girl voice, but following the first verse, she switches to a richer, more mature voice in the chorus.This mature artistic statement was visible in True Blue (1986). The song "Papa Don't Preach" was a significant milestone in her artistic career. The classical introduction, fast tempo and the gravity in her voice were unprecedented in Madonna's œuvre at that time.


 
With Like a Prayer (1989), Madonna again entered a new phase, musically. The album introduced live recorded songs and incorporated different genres of music, including dance, R&B and gospel music.Madonna continued to compose ballads and uptempo dance songs for Erotica (1992) and Bedtime Stories (1994). She tried to remain contemporary by incorporating samples, drum loops and hip hop into her music. Her voice grew much deeper and fuller, evident in the tracks like "Rain" and "Take a Bow".During the filming of Evita, Madonna had to take vocal lessons, which increased her range further. Of this experience she commented, "I studied with a vocal coach for Evita and I realized there was a whole piece of my voice I wasn't using. Before, I just believed I had a really limited range and was going to make the most of it."Continuing her musical evolution with Ray of Light, the track "Frozen" displayed her fully formed vocal prowess and her allusions to classical music. Her vocals were restrained and she sang the songs in Ray of Light without vibrato. However, the intake of breath within the songs became more prominent.With the new millennium came her album Music in which Madonna sang in her normal voice in a medium range, and sometimes in a higher register for the chorus.A change was also noted in the content of the songs, with most of them being simple love songs, but with an underlying tone of melancholy. Her next record, American Life, was infused with thumping techno rhythm, liquid keyboard lines, acoustic choruses and a rap on the title track. The unconventional rock songs of the album were intermingled with dramatic lyrics about patriotism and composition, including the appearance of a gospel choir in the song "Nothing Fails".Musically, things changed with Confessions on a Dance Floor, which returned Madonna to pure dance songs, infusing club beats and retro music, but the lyrics continued to be about paradoxical metaphors and reference to her earlier works.In her studio album, Hard Candy, she mixed R&B and hip hop music with dance tunes. The album also had songs whose lyrics were autobiographical and expressed support for helping Africa.Fouz-Hernández commented that "Throughout her career, Madonna's manipulation of her voice shows us that, by refusing to be defined in one way, she has in fact opened up a space for new kinds of musical analysis."With MDNA, Madonna returned to the electropop genre she flirted with on Like a Prayer and Music.Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph noted the attempt was feeble, compared to her previous classics in the genre.
 
Influences
According to Taraborrelli, "Almost certainly, the defining moment of Madonna's childhood—the one that would have the most influence in shaping her into the woman she would become—was the tragic and untimely death of her beloved mother."Psychiatrist Keith Ablow suggests that her mother's death would have had an immeasurable impact on the young Madonna at a time when her personality was still forming. According to Ablow, the younger a child is at the time of a serious loss, the more profound the influence and the longer lasting the impact. He concludes that "some people never reconcile themselves to such a loss at an early age, Madonna is not different than them."Conversely, author Lucy O'Brien feels that the impact of the rape is, in fact, the motivating factor behind everything Madonna has done, more important even than the death of her mother: "It's not so much grief at her mother's death that drives her, as the sense of abandonment that left her unprotected. She encountered her own worst possible scenario, becoming a victim of male violence, and thereafter turned that full-tilt into her work, reversing the equation at every opportunity."
 
As they grew older, Madonna and her sisters would feel deep sadness as the vivid memory of their mother began drifting farther from them. They would study pictures of her and come to think that she resembled poet Anne Sexton and Hollywood actresses. This would later raise Madonna's interest in poetry with Sylvia Plath being her favourite.Later, Madonna commented: "We were all wounded in one way or another by [her death], and then we spent the rest of our lives reacting to it or dealing with it or trying to turn into something else. The anguish of losing my mom left me with a certain kind of loneliness and an incredible longing for something. If I hadn't had that emptiness, I wouldn't have been so driven. Her death had a lot to do with me saying—after I got over my heartache—I'm going to be really strong if I can't have my mother. I'm going to take care of myself."Taraborrelli felt that in time, no doubt because of the devastation she felt, Madonna would never again allow herself, or even her daughter, to feel as abandoned as she had felt when her mother died. "Her death had taught [Madonna] a valuable lesson, that she would have to remain strong for herself because, she feared weakness—particularly her own—and wanted to be the queen of her own castle."
 
In 1985, Madonna commented that the first song to ever make a strong impression on her was "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra; she said it summed up her own "take-charge attitude".As a young woman, she attempted to broaden her taste in literature, art, and music, and during this time became interested in classical music. She noted that her favorite style was baroque, and loved Mozart and Chopin because she liked their "feminine quality".Other musical influences included artists Karen Carpenter, The Supremes, Led Zeppelin, and dancers such as Martha Graham and Rudolf Nureyev.Madonna's Italian-Catholic background and her relationship with her parents were reflected in the album Like a Prayer.It was an evocation of the impact religion had on her career.Her video for the title track contains Catholic symbolism, such as the stigmata. During The Virgin Tour, she wore a rosary, and also prayed with it in the music video for "La Isla Bonita".The "Open Your Heart" video sees her boss scolding her in the Italian language. On the Who's That Girl World Tour, she dedicated the song "Papa Don't Preach" to the Pope.


 
During her childhood, Madonna was inspired by actors, later saying, "I loved Carole Lombard and Judy Holliday and Marilyn Monroe. They were all incredibly funny ... and I saw myself in them ... my girlishness, my knowingness and my innocence."Her "Material Girl" music video recreated Monroe's look in the song "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She studied the screwball comedies of the 1930s, particularly those of Lombard, in preparation for the film Who's That Girl. The video for "Express Yourself" (1989) was inspired by Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis (1927). The video for "Vogue" recreated the style of Hollywood glamour photographs, in particular those by Horst P. Horst, and imitated the poses of Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard and Rita Hayworth, while the lyrics referred to many of the stars who had inspired her, including Bette Davis, described by Madonna as an idol.Influences also came to her from the art world, most notably through the works of artist Frida Kahlo.The music video of the song "Bedtime Story" featured images inspired by the paintings of Kahlo and Remedios Varo.She is also a collector of Tamara de Lempicka's art deco paintings and has included them in her music videos and tours.Her 2003 video for "Hollywood" was an homage to the work of photographer Guy Bourdin; Bourdin's son subsequently filed a lawsuit for unauthorised use of his father's work. Pop artist Andy Warhol's use of sadomasochistic imagery in his underground films were reflected in the music videos for "Erotica" and "Deeper and Deeper".However, Madonna's film career has been largely received negatively by the film critic community. Stephanie Zacharek, critic for Time magazine, stated that, "[Madonna] seems wooden and unnatural as an actress, and it's tough to watch, because she's clearly trying her damnedest."According to biographer Andrew Morton, "Madonna puts a brave face on the criticism, but privately she is deeply hurt."After the 2002 box office bomb Swept Away, Madonna vowed that she would never act in a film, hoping that her repertoire as a bad actress will never be discussed again.
 
Madonna is dedicated to Kabbalah and in 2004, she adopted the name Esther which in Persian means "star".She has donated millions of dollars to New York and London schools teaching the subject.She faced opposition from rabbis who felt Madonna's adoption of the Kabbalah was sacrilegious and a case of celebrity dilettantism. Madonna defended her studies, saying "It would be less controversial if I joined the Nazi Party", and that her involvement with the Kabbalah is "not hurting anybody."The influence of the Kabbalah was subsequently observed in Madonna's music, especially albums like Ray of Light and Music.During the Re-Invention World Tour, at one point in the show, Madonna and her dancers wore t-shirts that read "Kabbalists Do It Better".
 
Music videos and performances
In The Madonna Companion, biographers Allen Metz and Carol Benson noted that more than any other recent pop artist, Madonna had used MTV and music videos to establish her popularity and enhance her recorded work.According to them, many of her songs have the imagery of the music video in strong context, while referring to the music. The media and public reaction towards her most-discussed songs such as "Papa Don't Preach", "Like a Prayer" or "Justify My Love" had to do with the music videos created to promote the song and their impact, rather than the song itself.Morton felt that "artistically, Madonna's songwriting is often overshadowed by her striking pop videos."Madonna's initial music videos reflected her American and Hispanic mixed street style combined with a flamboyant glamor.She was able to transmit her avant-garde downtown New York fashion sense to the American audience.The imagery and incorporation of Hispanic culture and Catholic symbolism continued with the music videos from the True Blue era.Author Douglas Kellner noted, "such 'multiculturalism' and her culturally transgressive moves turned out to be highly successful moves that endeared her to large and varied youth audiences".Madonna's Spanish look in the videos became the fashion trend of that time, in the form of boleros and layered skirts, accessorizing with rosary beads and a crucifix as in the video of "La Isla Bonita".Academics noted that with her videos, Madonna was subtly reversing the usual role of male as the dominant sex.This symbolism and imagery was probably the most prevalent in the music video for "Like a Prayer". The video included scenes of an African-American church choir, Madonna attracted to a statue of a black saint, and singing in front of burning crosses. This mix of the sacred and the profane upset the Vatican and resulted in the Pepsi commercial withdrawal.Madonna has been honored with 20 MTV Video Music Awards—the most for any artist—including the lifetime achievement "Video Vanguard Award" in 1986.In 2003, MTV named her "The Greatest Music Video Star Ever" and said that "Madonna's innovation, creativity and contribution to the music video art form is what won her the award."
 
Madonna's emergence occurred during the advent of MTV; Chris Nelson from The New York Times spoke of pop artists like Madonna saying, "with its almost exclusively lip-synced videos, ushered in an era in which average music fans might happily spend hours a day, every day, watching singers just mouth the words."The symbiotic relationship between the music video and lip-syncing led to a desire for the spectacle and imagery of the music video to be transferred to live stage shows. He added, "Artists like Madonna and Janet Jackson set new standards for showmanship, with concerts that included not only elaborate costumes and precision-timed pyrotechnics but also highly athletic dancing. These effects came at the expense of live singing."Thor Christensen of the Dallas Morning News commented that while Madonna earned a reputation for lip-syncing during her 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour, she has subsequently reorganized her performances by "stay[ing] mostly still during her toughest singing parts and [leaves] the dance routines to her backup troupe ...[r]ather than try to croon and dance up a storm at the same time."To allow for greater movement while dancing and singing, she was one of the earliest adopters of hands-free radio-frequency headset microphones, with the headset fastened over the ears or the top of the head, and the microphone capsule on a boom arm that extended to the mouth. Because of her prominent usage, the microphone design came to be known as the "Madonna mic".Metz noted that Madonna represents a paradox as she is often perceived as living her whole life as a performance. While her big-screen performances are panned, her live performances are critical successes.Madonna was the first artist to have her concert tours as reenactment of her music videos. Author Elin Diamond explained that reciprocally, the fact that images from Madonna's videos can be recreated in a live setting enhances the realism of the original videos. Thus her live performances have become the means by which mediatized representations are naturalized.Taraborrelli said that encompassing multimedia, latest technology and sound systems, Madonna's concerts and live performances are deemed as "extravagant show piece, a walking art show."
 
Legacy
According to CNN, Madonna is "arguably the most influential female recording artist of all time."Critical theorist Douglas Kellner described her as "a highly influential pop culture icon" and "the most discussed female singer in popular music."William Langley from The Daily Telegraph noted that Madonna "remains a permanent fixture on every list of world's most powerful/admired/influential women."She is featured in the book 100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century, published in 1998 by Ladies' Home Journal.In 2010, Time magazine included Madonna in the elite list of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century", where she became one of the only two singers included, alongside Aretha Franklin.Madonna also topped VH1's countdowns of "100 Greatest Women in Music" and "50 Greatest Women of the Video Era".She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008—her first year of eligibility—for "influence and significance on rock and roll music."Additionally, Madonna ranked seventh on VH1 and People magazine's list of the "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons of All Time."Her worldwide commercial accomplishments have gave her multiple Guinness World Records citations, including the title for the world's top-selling female recording artist of all time.Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide.According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second top-selling female albums artist in the United States, with 64.5 million certified albums. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked Madonna at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of American singles chart.In 2011, Rolling Stone declared her as the all-time Queen of Pop and stated that "Madonna is a musical icon without peer."
 
Caryn Ganz from Rolling Stone wrote that "Madonna is the most media-savvy American pop star since Bob Dylan and, until she toned down her press-baiting behavior in the nineties, she was the most consistently controversial one since Elvis Presley."Stephen Thomas Erlewine felt that "one of Madonna's greatest achievements is how she has manipulated the media and the public with her music, her videos, her publicity, and her sexuality." He added that "Madonna was the first female pop star to have complete control of her music and image."Becky Johnston from Interview magazine commented: "[F]ew public figures are such wizards at manipulating the press and cultivating publicity as Madonna is. She has always been a great tease with journalists, brash and outspoken when the occasion demanded it, recalcitrant and taciturn when it came time to pull back and slow down the striptease."Throughout her career Madonna has repeatedly reinvented herself through a series of visual and musical personas. Fouz-Hernández agrees that this re-invention is one of her key cultural achievements.Madonna reinvented herself by working with upcoming talented producers and previously unknown artists, while remaining at the center of media attention. According to Freya Jarman-Ivens, "In doing so Madonna has provided an example of how to maintain one's career in the entertainment industry."Such reinvention was noted by scholars as the main tool in surviving the musical industry, for a female artist.The New York Times critic Kelefa Sanneh commented: "When you imagine Madonna, you don't see a single image but a time-lapse photograph, with one persona melting and warping into the next. It's an open-ended process, and when she's at her brilliant best, it's easy to believe that she could keep reinventing herself forever."
 
Madonna's use of shocking sexual imagery has benefited her career and catalyzed public discourse on sexuality and feminism.[295] The Times stated, "Madonna, whether you like her or not, started a revolution amongst women in music ... Her attitudes and opinions on sex, nudity, style and sexuality forced the public to sit up and take notice."Shmuel Boteach, author of Hating Women (2005), felt that Madonna was largely responsible for erasing the line between music and pornography. He stated: "Before Madonna, it was possible for women more famous for their voices than their cleavage, to emerge as music superstars. But in the post-Madonna universe, even highly original performers such as Janet Jackson now feel the pressure to expose their bodies on national television to sell albums."Professor Camille Paglia from University of the Arts called Madonna a "true feminist" and noted that "she exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode." According to her, "Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives." Madonna herself has stated, "I may be dressing the typical bimbo, whatever, but I'm in charge. You know. I'm in charge of my fantasies. I put myself in these situations with men, you know, and people don't think of me as a person who's not in charge of my career or my life, okay. And isn't that what feminism is all about, you know, equality for men and women? And aren't I in charge of my life, doing the things I want to do? Making my own decisions?"
 
[A] quarter century after Madonna emerged, artists still use her ideas and seem modern and edgy doing so. Beyond the obvious Madonna wannabe 1980s singers, Madonna's influence is felt in artists from Gwen Stefani to Britney Spears to boy bands, who found in the 1990s there was an audience beyond the old rock crowd... It's worth noting that before Madonna, most music mega-stars were guy rockers; after her, almost all would be female singers... When The Beatles hit America, they changed the paradigm of performer from solo act to band. Madonna changed it back — with an emphasis on the female.
—Tony Sclafani from MSNBC about Madonna's impact in music.
 
Erik Thompson from City Pages stated that "in the early '80s, Madonna broke down a lot of the industry doors that young entertainers stride through so brashly and confidently these days."According to Fouz-Hernández, female pop performers such as Britney Spears, Spice Girls, Destiny's Child, Jennifer Lopez, Kylie Minogue and Pink were like "Madonna's daughters in the very direct sense that they grew up listening to and admiring Madonna, and decided they wanted to be like her." Howard Kramer, curatorial director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, commented: "Today's more-flamboyant female pop stars enjoy the freedom to make music and perform the way they do, but they didn't create that freedom. Madonna did the moving and shaking when she burst onto the pop-music charts in the early '80s." He further asserted that "Madonna and the career she carved out for herself made possible virtually every other female pop singer to follow... She certainly raised the standards of all of them... She redefined what the parameters were for female performers."Billboard editor M. Tye Comer stated: "Although Madonna had her influences, such as David Bowie, she created her own unmistakable style... She wrote her own ticket; she didn't have to follow anybody's formula. She declared who she was ... and took possession of her music."
 
Madonna has received acclaim as a role model for businesswomen in her industry, "achieving the kind of financial control that women had long fought for within the industry", and generating over $1.2 billion in sales within the first decade of her career.After she established her own label, Maverick Records, in the 1990s it became a major commercial success from her efforts, which was unusual at that time for an artist-established label.Professor Colin Barrow of the Cranfield School of Management described Madonna as "America's smartest businesswoman ... who has moved to the top of her industry and stayed there by constantly reinventing herself". He held up her "planning, personal discipline and constant attention to detail" as models for all aspiring entrepreneurs.London Business School academics called her a "dynamic entrepreneur" worth copying; they identified her vision of success, her understanding of the music industry, her ability to recognize her own performance limits (and thus bring in help), her willingness to work hard and her ability to adapt as the key to her commercial success.Morton commented that "Madonna is opportunistic, manipulative and ruthless—somebody who won't stop until she gets what she wants—and that's something you can get at the expense of maybe losing your close ones. But that hardly mattered to her." Taraborrelli felt that this ruthlessness was visible during the shooting of the Pepsi commercial in 1989. "The fact that she didn't want to hold a Pepsi can in the commercial, clued the Pepsi executives that Madonna the pop star and Madonna the businesswoman were not going to be dictated by somebody else, she will do everything in her way — the only way."
 
Discography
Madonna (1983)
Like a Virgin (1984)
True Blue (1986)
Like a Prayer (1989)
Erotica (1992)
Bedtime Stories (1994)
Ray of Light (1998)
Music (2000)
American Life (2003)
Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005)
Hard Candy (2008)
MDNA (2012)
 
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